Mike Fertig – Blog & Portfolio

Tag: poetry

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to say that today marks the two year anniversary of my time here on WordPress. In that time I’ve written a lot of posts, deleted a lot of spam, read a lot of Chuck Norris facts, and even written and deleted a handful of posts having thought better of them.

To celebrate, for no particularly good reason, I’ve written a poem. I wonder who can identify the source of its inspiration. I actually hope to write a song with the same title. The lyrics would be quite different, however.

Sugar, Mr. Poone?by Michael P. Fertig

She converted personal holdings,
Not corporate holdings,
Personal holdings.
Were there improprieties?
Aren’t there always?
Like a fist punching a picture frame
Hanging from the wall,
Shattered lives tend to result
From murderous plots,
Polygamous tendencies,
And drug pushing cops.
Where are the mattress police
When you really need them?
Where have you gone,
Sally Anne Cavanaugh?
Where have you gone?

Sugar rat cocktails, mixed in bowls of blue.
Thunder bolt lightning, heaving through and through.
Latent skeezers, broken dreamers, foaming at the mouth,
While walled-out geezers filled with creamers prepare to journey south.
Mumbling piles of regrettable lunchmeat fester in the corner,
While humbling pies baked on Thursday give cause to a mourner.
The silky, soaked, and unsuppressable sobs cease to believe
In a sojourned delicacy that has been placed unfairly on the bereaved.
But yet, like a fleeting fleet of feeding feelers reeling in the fool,
Bombardments abound up and down the rocking of the pool.
For ’tis it not no boulder we watch careen down the slovenly slope,
In a direction sure to break the wind of all in range of humanity’s hope.
When the great stone that isn’t there finds its manifest missing
There is little that our breadwinner’s stare could not resist kissing.
Whether a golden-haired summertime lilly sitting on a lemur
Can understand the in’s and out’s of a captain’s old tramp steamer
Only leads one to believe in journeys both elegant and salacious.
And for this reason along with others one must render one’s self loquacious.
To tie the tongue with molten rock is clearly not unclever,
But to grease the palatte of another is a simply wrong endeavor.
When it becomes our place to mock another for their point of view,
Critical mass assaults our urge to bail out of our canoe.
Though we paddle with the strength of ten thousand mutant aphids
It takes but one Goliath to slay scores of unarmed Davids.
Strength of man cannot compare to the will of mighty flowers
Growing higher than the smallest men and toppling over towers.
When the unpleasant unctuous ogres gather joyfully to mingle,
Little can be done to halt the conflict that so often tends to tingle
The most uncouth, ungirding sense of falsehood which starts to take
a means of passage through the soul that belies that which is fake.
A contradiction, to be sure, tendered and plucked with known intents,
No matter how intense the tensions, the fleeing will commence.
For running hitherto upon a flagrant roaming cloud,
Is akin to jumping down from a disenchanted shroud
Whose cloth has borne unto us all a silhouette not known beyond
The realm of this in which we’re trapped, forbidden to correspond.
As the multi-colored bursts of beauty barrage the faint of heart,
It hardly seems a breach of duty when fear drips from the dart.
A poison liquid known to contaminate the righteous and the weak,
A unilateral terror for the strong and just another symptom for the meek.
They crumble to the ground now, strewn with presumption of the future
As tiny wishes tumble through our veins, until breaking through our sutures.
The languid languish languorically in a vile room filled with laudations
For the evil deaths which have occured despite our ministrations.
And regardless of attempts to rectify intangible rights from wrong,
Vulgar riffs of a heathen nature find their way into the throng.
And as we creep into a era decked in tattered smiles and spoiled laughter
It must be recognized that it’s nothing more than knowledge we lust after.
Yet escape us does the closure to this unending quest for things enlightning.
When the finality comes we quiver and shake and pull arrows spiked with frightening.
For whether a quiver of arrows or a quiver of fear the target remains fixed,
And let us not fixate too greatly on the the illusions which become mixed
With our sense of reality in a time of understanding and great confusion.
We’re just a stone’s short throw from being exiled to a purgatory of delusion.
Propagated magic beans sprout a stalk that grows into the attic of the sky,
We, too, must recognize the nonsense that might insulate us on high.
It is not a question of belief which might give us cause for grief,
As the lack thereof also can’t be blamed for the anger of a thief.
We must suppose that the puddle duck isn’t the cause or the solution,
A state repose of the muddled luck from which we gain our transfusion.
A bloody good bleeding has weakened the strong from an insurgent point of view,
Only to leave them ravaged and cold not comprehending of days of the new.
Full circle the lariat swings overhead like a blue-gray cloud, lethargically immense,
We close this prose by returning to the verse which undoubtedly holds the most sense.
Sugar rat cocktails, mixed in bowls of blue.
Thunder bolt lightning, heaving through and through.

I wrote this a long time ago. It’s a completely non-autobiographical poem about a troubled rock ‘n’ roll star.

Tortured

A sea of faces stare in anticipation,
the bass drum kicks wicked repetition.
Guitar licks echo as the wind swirls,
my brow furrows at the swooning girls.
Every word I sing,
every reprise I bring,
makes them crazy – their toes in curls.

It’s not the sound of my voice,
irrelevant is any given word choice.
It’s not the chords from my guitar,
that bring them here from near and far.
The stadium is full,
which seems like such bull.
Who am I that should command such a star?

But here I stand, singing my song,
each word meaningless, everything wrong.
But still they scream, their lighters waving,
not knowing why they’re all craving,
my attention,
my affection,
in the windy night that they’re all braving.

My face is soaked, I’m filled with fears,
it’s not raining, I’m covered in tears.
It makes no sense, what have I done?
One would think it would be fun
to have written a song,
to which they sing along.
Tonight I make love to my gun.

Like a diorama,
the city is still.
Lights are on,
but they witness little.
Cars still roam
like buffalo,
so few of them around;
but they avoid extinction
with the ease of a sunrise,
and the promise of another
dollar.

When that time comes,
however,
we will have escaped.
Gone to a place where
time
isn’t
money.
A place where up is down and down is up.
But yet it isn’t…

In honor of the football coming to a close with yesterday’s Super Bowl, I thought I’d post this poem I stumbled across by the British poet, Harold Pinter. Pinter just won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature.

American Football

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Since the stream was wet that there fish was too.
The fish was in the water, which was blue.
Minding his own business, the fish he did swim,
right down that stream as if on a whim.

He stopped as he swam at the sight of something squirmy,
a worm on a hook in need of an infirmiry.
“This freakin’ hook is stuck right through my damn ass,”
the worm said to the fish with a heavy touch of sass.

“That’s a hell of a spot, you’ve got yourself in,”
said the fish to the worm as he licked his chin.
“But it’s a shame you’re so helpless and looking delicious,
when I eat you, please know that it’s nothing malicious.”

And in an instant so quick, that worm he was lunch,
the fish had been starving and needed to munch.
But wait, what had happened? Something’s not right.
That fish found himself stuck like a pig in moonlight.

“Aw hell,” said the fish, “I’m such a freakin’ chump
That dumb worm even told me he had a hook in his rump.”
With a sudden violent pull, the fishhook lodged solid,
and that fish was on a boat with a man who looked squalid.

“Well you’re a ripe sized old fish,” said the filthy old man.
“I’ll keep you and gut you and fry you up in a pan.”
The fish gasped to breathe but the air was quite dry,
He thought that flip-flopping might be worth a try.

But then a revelation came over the fish,
What if he offered the old man a wish?
Or more wishes even, like three, four, or five.
Maybe the old man would let him survive!

“Hey there old timer,” said the fish to the man.
“If I grant you some wishes will you spare me the pan?”
The grizzled old fisherman spit out his tobacky,
“Is that fish there talking? Or have I gone all wacky?”

“No no,” reassured the fish in voice soft and kindly.
You’re not going wacky, I’m speaking refinedly.
You caught me and plucked me right out of that stream,
But let me go and I’ll make real your wildest dream.”

“At first I might not think that wishes you could grant,
but as I breathe, here I stand listening to a fish give a rant
about making dreams real and granting me wishes,
so if you can talk, you must be one of them magical fishes.”

“Magical I am,” the fish replied quickly,
“hurry and wish before my scales turn prickly.
For whatever you utter I am obliged to produce
You want girls, or money, or how ’bout a goose?”

“A goose?” asked the man with a smile and a laugh.
“That’s crazy you freak, I should cut you in half.
I should eat you right now, have a feast made of fishes.
Yeah, I wish for a goose, instead of a great piles of riches!”

“Okay,” said the fish, “you said it out loud.
A goose you shall have, instead of riches abound.”
The sky crowded with clouds for a moment then cleared,
and from out of nowhere a big fat goose just appeared.

“You ordered a goose?” said the bird to the fish.
“Sure did,” he replied, “just granting a wish.”
And they chatted right there, that fish and that goose,
the fisherman couldn’t help it, he took a swig of his juice.

“This is one crazy day,” he muttered as he drank.
“If I ain’t drunk, then my name just ain’t Frank.”
“If you say so, then Chuck,” responded the fish with a grin.
“But you’re probably Frank ’cause that’s water, not gin.”

“So what now? Is that it? Or for another wish have I a choice?
You tricked me of my first. Now I’ve got a goose with a voice.”
“Right you are,” said the fish, “that was horribly unfair.
Make another right now and I’ll make it come from thin air.”

The fisherman sat, crossed his legs, and began to think,
“I’ve got it!” he said, and to the goose threw a wink.
“I wish for some dinner, something good, something tasty,
a full scrumptious meal, and for dessert some pastry.

“A meal it is,” said the fish in a whip,
and suddenly a kitchen appeared on the ship.
A stove on which sat a pot and some potaters,
a pastry nearby, and two lady caterers.

“We’re here at your service,” one lady did say.
“What sort of delicacy may we whip up today?”
The man did look upward, trying to think of a dish.
“You know what?” he said. “I feel like some FISH!”

The fish took a gulp as he recognized his fate,
the goose sort of giggled and asked for a plate.
With a sigh and smile, the fish said in a whisper,
“I don’t suppose you wanna try cooking my sister?”

“‘Fraid not,” the man said as he walked down the boat.
“You’re what I’m eatin’. And keep your bones out my throat.”
The fish looked up and said, “Funny how this all transpired.”
Then he was tossed to the chopping block, where he violently expired.

So what did we learn from this situation today?
Talking fish can’t be trusted, so go on and fillet.